I want to live in a little house with a big porch on the seashore. I want to live in an apartment in New York City with a geranium on the fire escape. I want crisp white sheets and gingham curtains.
I want gilded mirrors and french porcelain.

Most SAHM's have lives very different from those of the women depicted on The Real Housewives. The majority of SAHM's do not enjoy daily wine fueled lunch dates with friends or are SAHM's who indulge in weekly shopping sprees and spa treatments.

We are hurt by a loved one; we then have a choice. Are we going to focus on what went wrong, what was done, or who said what? Or are we going to work toward a place where we can think rationally and decide how we should proceed?

Various forces bigger than ourselves -- perhaps most of all marketing and pop culture - shape our goals without us realizing it, guiding our lives for us, often in directions that, were we to think about it, we would want to resist. Life becomes, for instance, a series of consumer decisions based on our preferences for this or that experience, or a mad race for some vaguely-defined "success."

Most of reality doesn't matter, but a few things -- in this case choices -- matter a huge amount. In other words, there is a very small number of choices that will determine the great majority of results.

And so it is: I am officially 30 years young. Yes, I use the word young instead of old, contrary to my previous belief that once I turned the big 3-0, life as I had known it prior to this milestone would never be the same again. Period.

You may never become a programmer, but I hope you choose to give it a shot. If you decide at some point it's not for you, choose to try something else. Repeat the cycle until you find your passion. Choose to pursue it. Make time for it.

Get uneasy, get scared, become a beginner again. You will learn something new about yourself, not only about your character, but what turns on your light. Once you've found something that turns on your light, you've found purpose.

I cannot point to one thing and say, "It is that right there that brings me effortless joy!" any more than I can say, "Oh, the sky starts right over here." It is these series of breaths we take and the beautiful things that happen in between them that provide weight to our existence.

The truest thing I can figure out is that attaining and maintaining happiness has a lot less to do with making the correct choices, and more to do with cultivating an ability to weather change with all the courage, humility, curiosity and amusement we can muster.